According to Luis Gallop, director of the New Hampshire chapter of the Hemlock Society, "Death with dignity is the coming thing." He was referring to assisted suicide, which was examined at a panel discussion this past Thursday.
If Gallop has read the signs of the times correctly in coming to his conclusion, this does not augur well for either our individual or our collective future. Currently, there are federal and state laws against assisted suicide, but there are constitutional and legal challenges pending that could legalize it within the decade. This would be a grave error.
According to Gallop, assisted suicide is an individual's right, saying, "Our life is ours; some do not have the means to act on that, and therefore need help to end their life with grace."
But by its very definition, assisted suicide is not an individual act. Furthermore, the legalization of assisted suicide necessarily leads to active euthanasia, the direct killing of someone who is not able to ask or give permission for someone to kill them. This can be seen in the Netherlands, where assisted suicide is legal. Twenty-five percent of the attempts to commit suicide fail, usually leaving the person in a comatose state.
Dr. Joann Lynn, a geriatrician and health-care researcher, pointed out during the discussion that "the public-policy debate concerning assisted suicide right now is misguided. Instead, we should be asking ourselves, what do we want for ourselves in our dying days?" Do we want to be gently reminded that our time is up? That our presence is costly? That our life is no longer "useful," no longer needed and no longer of any worth?
Of course not. We wish to be loved and cared for, to love and to care for others and to know that our life still has worth. This is not the message that would be sent with the legalization of assisted suicide.
Those who assert that assisted suicide is the only compassionate choice are completely wrong. There are many other things which we could be doing right now, but are not doing, to deal with death and dying. Lynn provided some examples of such action, asserting, "We will not tolerate doctors who can't effectively deal with pain and we will not tolerate hospitals that let people die in pain." As she noted in her speech, we don't even know how many people die in hospitals and how many die at home, how many people die in pain, alone or bankrupt. Why have we not dealt with such questions? Much of it has to do with the way the dying are viewed by society. Death is taboo and is not discussed openly; the dying are treated as others. It is highly problematic that assisted suicide is considered a viable alternative to life when we have yet to fully face the problem of death.
Recognizing that a right to die can be subtly and dangerously transformed into a duty to die is not a cynical perspective as some would suggest, but a realistic perspective. Economic arguments march proudly, side by side with the rhetoric of autonomous choice and individual freedom under the right to die banner as they tramp off to the drumbeat of a more compassionate and coldly cost-efficient future into the most certain sunset of all, the sunset of human life.
